K
KHOSA

"The truly humane art is a wrestle with ourselves;
it is to entangle the self with the basic stuff of reality;
it is to get out of our time-bound egos and to enter
the worlds of universal energy.

Can there be any other purpose of art than to convey
this energy"

K. Khosa has been working as a professional painter
since 1962. He has held more than ten solo exhibitions
of his paintings at Delhi, Kolkota and Mumbai. Having
used ink, pencil, oils and acrylics, he has participated
in major national and international shows bringing him
the “National Award” in 1981 and President
of India’s silver plaque in 1974. To trace his
growth as an artist, his paintings can be found in the
significant collections of the National Gallery of Modern
Art, Lalit Kala Academy, Sahitya Kala Parishad of Delhi,
International airport authority of India and with numerous
private collections in India, America, Canada, Dubai,
Hong kong and Europe.

His artistic enquiry has impelled him to collaborate
with his contemporaries in poetry, literature and theatre.
Such concerns also brought him the department of culture’s
senior fellowship (1979-82 ) for “Integrating
the visual language of art and content and coordinating
it as a whole”. His paintings along with his concerns
have been extensively published throughout the country
including the paintings reproduced by the International
Design journal (No.42) Seoul, Korea. Among the most
prestigious, an extensive interview along with the reproduction
of paintings was published by “Temenos 13”
an international review journal devoted to the “Arts
of the Imagination” published from London. Represented
at Sixth Babylon International Festival of Iraq-1994.
A slide presentation of the three decades of his paintings
was held at an International seminar of The Indira Gandhi
National Center of the Arts arranged in collaboration
with the Millennium Trust of Britain in 2004.

A 28 min. documentary on the life and work of K. Khosa
was released by the National Channel of Doordarshan
including the D.D.World and the Prasar Bharti Channels
in 2003-2004.

Perhaps, the body of Khosa's work could be divided
into three decades- namely 1975 to 2005. The first decade
belonged to the genre where the subject of the painting
was important. The colours and forms were only instrumental
here. The conviction used to be that one of the main
functions of art was to help free mankind from the tyranny
of transient emotions, the bondage of base desires.
Well, all this used to be expressed through a technique;
layering of pigments on images much removed from the
naturalistic, but which nevertheless did not take them
into the esoteric field as the monumental images sculpted
in stone.

The second decade went on to reflect the storm of emotions
or passions. Here the lines that were flowing were sinuous
and yet tense. The paintings used to hover between figuration,
abstraction and representation – the gentle ambiguities
of each blurring into each other mutually, enchacing
their feel of recondite or not so recondite yearnings.

The third decade that is the present phase belongs
to some one who looks outwards, even when he learns
to turn his gaze inwards to become aware of a secret
life that is, the larger life buried within. Some such
thought kindled in him the desire to study the Sanskrit
texts like the Upanishads and to grasp the roots of
our very being. The study inspired him to paint in a
fresh way. A manifestation of the spirit of all the
five elements of nature, like those invoked in the Vedic
hymns. The theme of the earth and the water constituted
the basis of innumerable life-giving myths.